FAMOUS DUCKS OF THE HERO WARS!

[goldenwheeldancer]

On 1/29/2017 at 7:03 PM, Iskallor said:

Superb. Glorantha is at it's best when superficial and vacuous.

Totally THIS! Glorantha got a bit too serious for me!

And Quakatoa, I would totally buy this kinda thing in some kind of supplement with scenarios.

[Grievous]

On 1/29/2017 at 9:03 PM, Iskallor said:

Superb. Glorantha is at it's best when superficial and vacuous.

I don't really roll that way myself, but I still absolutely love Quackatoa's stuff, so I don't think serious Ducks are an oxymoron!

[Stew Stansfield]

Updated the first post with some new links to some recent (and not so recent) nonsense.

[Joerg]

Looking at those ornamental plumes on the helmets, I wonder whether Durulz wouldn't use long-haired fur rather than feathers for helmet ornamentation?

Do you have any aquatic fighter forces that surface behind your boat for a quick, nasty attack and then return into the water?

[Stew Stansfield]

3 minutes ago, Joerg said:

Looking at those ornamental plumes on the helmets, I wonder whether Durulz wouldn't use long-haired fur rather than feathers for helmet ornamentation?

Do you have any aquatic fighter forces that surface behind your boat for a quick, nasty attack and then return into the water?

Latterly, my conceit has been that just as humans use animal hair and feathers to decorate their helmets, clothes and armour, ducks—and other Beastfolk—use...

Human hair. Particularly beards.

I have a piece on this I've been meaning to finish (and might do so now).

Also, a word on feathers: I draw a lot of them. I guess some might think it's weird for feathered creatures to adorn themselves with yet more feathers. I do it because I think ducks are showy little things and like to display not only their own plumage, but also that of others.

In the nicest sense, they will keep and display the feathers of ancestors as sacred mementos that frequently act as spell and spirit matrices, charms, fetishes, etc.

In the nastiest sense, they like to ritually pluck and humiliate their enemies and rivals, and display such feathers as a sign of victory and dominance. 'Pluck' is the rudest swearword in the duck dialect. "(I'll) Pluck you!" "Go pluck yourself/your mother!" "Get plucked!" "I'll be plucked if I'm doing that!"

I did start writing this up a few years ago, as well as rules for duck duels, where participants would sacrifice POW (?) into feathers, which would then be plucked by the victor. But I lost it somewhere...

As to the last point... no! I really should have a think. That could be quite fun! Sadly, I'm quite slow and have so many things to finish...

[soltakss]

I like eyelashes and lipstick on my female ducks, eyelashes because they are easy to use and lipstick because it makes absolutely no sense.

[jajagappa]

36 minutes ago, soltakss said:

lipstick because it makes absolutely no sense

The latest Lunar fashion made with red moon dust, or a plot by Quicksilver Mostali to undermine human and duck cultures.

[Stew Stansfield]

Some afternoon Duck Lore. 'Cos who doesn't like afternoon Duck Lore?

 

Duck Point & Stone Nest: A Tale of One Two Cities

I've been scribbling and sketching some silliness about Duck Point, recently, and therefore came up against the amusingly weird farrago—or is that anti-farrago?—that is the relationship between the duck settlements of Duck Point and Stone Nest. I did some investigations into this half-a-dozen years ago, and thought I'd reprise that info on the two cities here.

Because, of course, they're supposed to be the same place...

 

Maps, Part Urrrghhhhn

Many of us know the story about how Duck Point came to be in Glorantha. Greg, when making the maps for White Bear and Red Moon (1975), named several settlements after friends and contributors to his past and present endeavours, notably the fanzine Wyrd. One friend, Brian Crist, asked that Greg named 'his' settlement 'Duckburg'. Greg, conscious of Disney's litigiousness, demurred, and instead settled on the name of 'Duck Point'. Duck Point would be a feature of maps of Dragon Pass for decades to come – albeit not always, as we'll come to see, in the same place...

'Stone Nest' is first mentioned in the 'Sartar High Council' freeform write-up in Wyrms Footnotes #7 (1979), which is reprinted in Wyrms Footprints (1995), pp. 96–103. Specifically, it is mentioned in the private knowledge known only to Joseph Greenface, the duck shaman and spokesbeak. Joseph knows that the ducks keep "... a third of their warriors on alert and mustered at Stone Nest... unknown [he thinks] to the Empire, who do not occupy that little city." There is no mention of Duck Point in Joseph's information. There is no mention of Stone Nest—only Duck Point—elsewhere in the write-up.

Stone Nest does not appear on any published maps of that period and receives no further mention until the 1990s. In Tales of the Reaching Moon #5 (1991), Jon Quaife's map (p. 3) showed the greatest detail on the area hitherto published. Jon's map is based on Greg's own master map of Dragon Pass, which Jeff kindly posted here. Similar details appear on Phil Anderson's map on pp. 34–35 of Tales of the Reaching Moon #19 (2000), which is reprinted in Wyrms Footnotes #15 (2012), pp. 16–17.

On these maps, there are clearly two separate localities: one, marked 'Duck Point', sits at the confluence of The Stream and the combined Creek-Stream River; the other, marked 'Stone Nest Ruins', lies around ten miles inland.

That's pretty clear, right?

Not quite.

 

All roads lead to... well, it depends

On the Jon/Phil/Greg map—which, as the most detailed version, is the basis for subsequent maps such as Wesley Quadros' insert from Dragon Pass: Land of Thunder (2003)—'Stone Nest Ruins' sit at the terminus of the Wilmskirk road. There is no road, way or path marked between Stone Nest Ruins and Duck Point. (N.B. There is a trail on Wesley's map, for reasons we'll come to in a minute.) Yet on William Church's original Dragon Pass and RuneQuest (1978; 1980, p. 108) maps, it is Duck Point that clearly lies at the terminus of the Wilmskirk road.

King of Sartar (1992), which doesn't mention Stone Nest, speaks of Tarkalor building a road between Wilmskirk and Duck Point (a 'river port'; also 'Duckton'; pp. 44, 139). Subsequent publications follow this line in word and cartography, notably Barbarian Adventures (2001; p. 5), Sartar: Kingdom of Heroes (2009; p. 248) and The Guide to Glorantha, vol. I (2014; p. 188).

So why, on multiple maps, does the clearly attested Duck Point road—and the point of a 'Wilmskirk–Duck Point road' is that it generally goes from Wilmskirk to Duck Point...—not actually reach its destination?

 

Maps, Part Deux

The answer likely lies on another map of Greg's, which is printed in History of the Heortling Peoples (2007), p. 12. (You may need a magnifying glass.)

On this map, there are two familiar settlements. The one at the confluence of The Stream and the Creek-Stream River is labelled 'Duck Point'. The settlement ten miles inland is labelled both 'Duck Point' and 'Stone Nest'. The Wilmskirk road goes to this latter settlement. (Actually, it doesn't. It stops a few miles short, for some reason, and a trail continues the way. This is copied by Wesley.)

And therein lies the crux.

Greg would sometimes place Duck Point in different places on different maps. William Church's RuneQuest map is itself indistinct, while the maps of Thunder Rebels (2000; p. 51), Barbarian Adventures (p. 5) and, most notably, Yurek Chodak's map from 'Dragons Past 1' in Different Worlds #28 (1983) [reprinted in Wyrms Footnotes #15, p. 51] all show Duck Point inland, in the same position taken by Stone Nest.

 

Greg Sez...

Looking at all this, I wondered if there'd been a mixup. The mention of Stone Nest in Wyrms Footnotes—from a duck's perspective—seemed a fitting choice for the duck endonym for a small duck settlement ringed in walls of stone, which the humans and other outsiders called Duck Point. The map in History of the Heortling Peoples seemed to support that, as did the multiple contradictions over the terminus of the Wilmskirk road; that confusion over the placement of a single settlement somehow resolved into a state where there were two settlements in two separate places.

So I asked Greg. His answer (repeated twice, for emphasis)? They're supposed to be the same place. "One [Duck Point] is the human name, the other [Stone Nest] is the duck name."

I'm not sure exactly how, or when, the idea of Duck Point and Stone Nest becoming separated became standardised.

But in my Glorantha I like to put them back together again. (And, yes, it's supposed to be at the confluence of The Stream and the Creek-Stream River.)

 

[jeffjerwin]

The road may end and turn into a muddy path because no one could see the point of finishing it after Sartar passed.

Also, mud is a lot easier for webbed feet to navigate than boots and hoofs.

Hence a defensive measure?

[Stew Stansfield]

11 minutes ago, jeffjerwin said:

The road may end and turn into a muddy path because no one could see the point of finishing it after Sartar passed.

Also, mud is a lot easier for webbed feet to navigate than boots and hoofs.

Hence a defensive measure?

Tarkalor built the road for distinctly human benefit, not ducks'. (And it has quite the benefit.)

(Ducks got along just fine along The Stream! I rather think a lot of duck banditry is, jokingly, down to Tarkalor's road putting a lot of those ducks who worked The Stream out of business. After all, you need a highway for there to be dandy highwayducks...)

[seneschal]

I had assumed "Elf-finger" was a James Bond reference.  Ducks in tuxedos with guns!  Because if they worship a death god, having that License to Kill just makes sense.

 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Spy-Bath-Duck-James-Pond/dp/B0013V73R8#immersive-view_1536238736820

 

Edited September 6, 2018 by seneschal

[jeffjerwin]

Someone should do a 'Red Cow' style book for the Durulz.

What are the Duck clans?

Who are their ancestral wyters?

What epic feuds over stolen livestock have played out?

Who is their Romeo and who is their Juliet?

[Stew Stansfield]

50 minutes ago, jeffjerwin said:

Someone should do a 'Red Cow' style book for the Durulz.

What are the Duck clans?

These days, I find I focus almost solely on characters, who are conveniently idiosyncratic and unreliable narrators on a subject that, I think, benefits from a considerable degree of ambiguity. (I always think I fail, though, and go too far!) So I'm currently writing up the in-my-Glorantha personages of the Duck Point ring* for 1625. I have to do a picture, though—always have to do a picture—so heaven knows when it'll be done. (It won't be of the members of the ring. I'm not that co-ordinated.)

For clans, I use the list of potential duck clans seen in King of Dragon Pass (Rune Ducks, Thunder Ducks, Old Ducks, Spire Ducks, Beaker Ducks, Cabbage Ducks, Slapfoot Ducks, Marsh Ducks), with one or two of my own added. That accords fairly well with the population figure. Sure, the clan names date from the Resettlement Era, and most of you buggers probably killed them on your playthroughs. But I'm lazy and I'm happy with it! Martin et al. also followed that line in Tales of the Reaching Moon #19.

 

*Yes, I know Duck Point doesn't have a city ring in the sense of a ritual-political basis for a tribal confederation. The ducks do have a ring, though, which likely meets in Duck Point.

[jajagappa]

7 hours ago, Quackatoa said:

Tarkalor built the road for distinctly human benefit, not ducks'. (And it has quite the benefit.)

Plus it's part of the magic of the Royal Roads that they go to the cities that unify North (Jonstown), East (Swenston), South (WIlmskirk), and West (Duck Point).  Of course, the West tribes didn't fulfill their destiny to be ruled by the Duck Ring, but there you go.  City, road, and confederation all fit together so roads cannot fall short of the cities.

[jeffjerwin]

Do ducks have clans or do they have rafts, braces, teams, or paddlings?

Paddlings may be their war bands.

[Stew Stansfield]

5 hours ago, jeffjerwin said:

Do ducks have clans or do they have rafts, braces, teams, or paddlings?

Paddlings may be their war bands.

I'm sure, yes! I definitely name criminal gangs after terms of venery. Especially keets. (TERROR OF THE KEET TONGS!) I also like 'sord', which means you can do sword/sord puns. (Which sadly backfire when everyone tells you you've misspelled 'sword-sage'...)

[Joerg]

20 minutes ago, Quackatoa said:

I'm sure, yes! I definitely name criminal gangs after terms of venery. Especially keets. (TERROR OF THE KEET TONGS!) I also like 'sord', which means you can do sword/sord puns. (Which sadly backfire when everyone tells you you've misspelled 'sword-sage'...)

For some inexplicable reason, people are more at home with almost lovecraftian pronunciations like pterodactyl, pteranodon or quetzalcoatl than with a sordid sord. While beaked, this shape doesn't come to mind at first when thinking of webbed foot anthropomorphic birds. I wonder whether the parrot keets are that closely related to all those other keets. Sords may be similarly close or distant.

[Stew Stansfield]

3 minutes ago, Joerg said:

For some inexplicable reason, people are more at home with almost lovecraftian pronunciations like pterodactyl, pteranodon or quetzalcoatl than with a sordid sord. While beaked, this shape doesn't come to mind at first when thinking of webbed foot anthropomorphic birds... Sords may be similarly close or distant.

(Is there a sord/sorn mix-up here, or German-language thing I'm missing? )

5 minutes ago, Joerg said:

I wonder whether the parrot keets are that closely related to all those other keets.

The parrot-people of Forng? Greg doesn't think so.

[metcalph]

20 minutes ago, Quackatoa said:

The parrot-people of Forng? Greg doesn't think so.

I did once think of calling them Parakeets.  

[seneschal]

No, no, those are the Special Forces ducks.

 

 

 

Edited September 6, 2018 by seneschal

[Dragonsnail]

Just plain amazing Durulz lore and illustrations Quackatoa!

[PhilHibbs]

On 6/18/2018 at 10:40 PM, Quackatoa said:

I didn't want to clog up the RQG Bestiary with this tangent, and here seemed pertinent. Also this thread is full of utter bollocks anyhow, and the OP (me) isn't going to complain.

DO DUCKS HAVE BOOBS?

IMG, the anthropomorphism of ducks is hugely varied, depending on the individual's beast/man runic balance. More beast-influenced ducks lay eggs and have more duck-shaped bodies, ducks with higher man-rune ratings have boobs and chew cigars.

Unfortunately in RQG this means that in order to have a cosmetic influence on your character, you need to spend rune rating points in character creation. I think I'd allow a player creating a duck to buy Man or Beast at half price, in order to reflect this broad dimorphism in the species.

Oh, best thread ever by the way. Thanks for bumping it.

Edited September 7, 2018 by PhilHibbs

[jajagappa]

4 hours ago, PhilHibbs said:

the anthropomorphism of ducks is hugely varied, depending on the individual's beast/man runic balance. More beast-influenced ducks lay eggs and have more duck-shaped bodies, ducks with higher man-rune ratings have boobs and chew cigars.

I like it!  Sounds like something I'll have to adopt in my game.

[Darius West]

A 1pt Unit with a water bonus that helps them move through swamp.  The sad fate of Ducks in the Hero Wars is to be sacrificed on the Altar of Delecti to win his allegiance to Sartar's cause and so the Lunars don't get Delecti first.  They die as they lived...as some sort of sick joke.  Poor ducks.

Edited November 3, 2018 by Darius West

[Stew Stansfield]

On the mean, muddy streets of Duck Point...